Wooden cooperage is used extensively in the wine making industry and the food industry. Wooden vessels are commonly used to store wine and foods because wood is porous enough to allow the products to slowly breathe thereby promoting slow aging of the products. The use of wooden vessels has the further advantage of allowing tannin, and other organics which occur naturally in wood, to subtly influence the flavor of the stored products.
Unfortunately, the porous nature of wooden cooperage also has the effect of allowing the wood to absorb bacteria, off flavor chemicals and other contaminants. The flavor of wine or food stored in a contaminated or molded vessel can be spoiled. Thus, methods have been developed to clean vessels designed for food storage.
One type of method developed to clean storage containers involves treating a container with an active chemical agent. The chemical agent is removed from the container by treating the container with some type of neutralizing chemical and then rinsing with water. A major disadvantage of these types of methods is that often residual films, comprised of the treating chemicals, remain behind.
Other methods have been developed in which containers have been immersed in baths or ozone and water mixtures or in which containers have been treated with ozone gas. Ozone is an excellent oxidation and sterilization agent which spontaneously decomposes to oxygen. However, the forementioned methods are not completely effective on containers to which hard to remove contaminants have bound. These methods are especially ineffective on wooden vessels because the ozone does not sufficiently penetrate deep beneath the surface of the container where contaminants can be absorbed.
Accordingly, it is an object of the invention to provide a method for sterilizing containers in which the entire inside surface of a container is sprayed with ozonated water under high pressure.
It is another object of the invention to provide a method for sterilizing wooden cooperage in which a veneer of the interior container surface is removed by spraying the surface with a high power stream of ozonated water.
It is a further object of the invention to provide a method for sterilizing containers which does not require the use of a neutralizing agent to neutralize cleaning chemicals.